How to become a Web Volunteer
About a year ago, I embarked on a project through an organization called InterConnection.
InterConnection, as its website says, works to make Internet technology accessible to underserved communities around the world. As a web designer and/or developer, you can become a “web volunteer” and help build sites for other organizations out there who need a site but don’t have the money or the know-how to build one themselves.
So this is what I did. I became a web volunteer. InterConnection assigned me a project – to build a site for Shauri Yako Community Youth Support Centre in Kenya. How excited was I?!? Kenya! Awesome! Apart from doing something which was going to help others a LOT, I was going to have to push my boundaries and come up with a design. Yikes.
Shauri Yako Community Youth Support Centre is a community based organization, based in Nyeri, Kenya. SYSC was created to provide developmental services for children and youth living in poverty in Nyeri. SYSC works with vulnerable children, youth and women who face poverty, HIV/AIDS pandemic or social isolation to address their needs and hopes.
Within a few days of being assigned this project, Joe from Shauri Yako got in touch with me and with InterConnection’s help, we set them up with some online hosting and I started on the designs. Now, me not having a creative bone in my body meant that it was, let’s say, somewhat difficult for me to come up with a nice design. It took me about… 26 designs(!!!) and many frustrating one-sided arguments with photoshop until both Joe and I were happy with it. Phew! What a mammoth effort that was!
I then embarked on actually building the site. I had received lots of word documents and requirements from Joe, so this part was pretty easy. APART from the fact that in order to challenge myself a little bit more, I had decided that I would build the whole thing with as little HTML as possible and as much CSS as I could come up with. This, however, didn’t sit well with many browsers and after many attempts and many hours cursing at IE, as well as the realisation that this site was actually meant to be as accessible as possible (read: cross-browser), I gave up and re-did the site in HTML tables. Urgh. But, it took probably no more than 1.5 hours. How frustrating.
Anyway, the site has now been up and running for a few months and apart from a few last bits and pieces to tidy up, I would say it’s pretty much done.
But I’ll tell you the best part of all this. The other day when I did what I bet a lot of you out there also do but don’t admit to – “googled” myself – I came across one result which I totally didn’t expect. Shauri Yako had dedicated a paragraph of one of their latest newsletters to thanking me, Annie Luxton from New Zealand, and others from all around the world who have helped them in various different ways. That recognition was one of the best feelings I’ve had in a LONG time.
Here is a screenshot of the page as it is now – the best design I could come up with. I know it ain’t the greatest but it’s usable (well, at least I think so!) and does the job 
p{margin: 0px auto; text-align: center;}.
